Friday, August 05, 2011

Grateful Puddings.

Before I start today, I want to thank those of you who have
made comments on the blog recently – and I apologise for not responding
immediately. I really, absolutely, appreciate your thoughts and effort. I will,
absolutely, definitely get back to you soon. My pathetic excuse (explanation?)
is that I have been madly catching up to several deadlines which had lain in waiting
(and, I swear, multiplying like rabbits) for me until I returned from holiday,
and which have now more or less been brought under control.

This sense of gratitude reminded me that once upon a time things – such as food and beverages – were
also described as ‘grateful’. The Oxford
English Dictionary gives one of the usages of the word (from mid-sixteenth
to mid-nineteenth centuries) as meaning ‘pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome’, and
I most ardently hope that all of your daily food can be described this
way.

I give you, along
with my gratitude, two eighteenth century recipes for puddings which the
cookery book authors assure us are ‘grateful.’

Orange
Pudding.

Take three fair Oranges,cut them and squeeze
off the Juice into a clean Pan, boil the Peels in two or three Waters, ‘till
the bitterness is off, then pick out the Pulp and Strings, and beat the Peel
very fine in your Mortar, with Orange-flower-Water; then mid it up with the
strain’d Juice; add to it nine Eggs, leaving out four Whites, half a pound of
Butter, and Sugar to your Taste; put a Puff-paste at the bottom of the Dish;
and Garnish the edge of the Dish with Paste: Some People only grate in the
Peels raw, and leave out the Juice, but I think the above-written way is the
most Grateful and Pleasant.

A Collection
of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick, and Surgery, (1714)

A
Grateful Pudding.

TO a pound
of flour, add a pound of white bread grated. Take eight eggs, but only half the
whites. Beat them up, and mix with them a pint of new milk. Then stir in the
bread and flour, a pound of raisins stoned, a pound of currants, half a pound
of sugar, and a little beaten ginger. Mix it well together, and either bake or
boil it. It will take three quarters of an hour baking. Put cream in, instead
of, milk, if you have it, which will be a great addition.

The London Art of Cookery, (1787), John
Farley.

Quotation of the Day.

“....if a
man hates tapioca pudding he is a good fellow and my friend.”

Hi Ed. Instructions in old cookery books are not always crstal clear, are they? It means two or three times - that is, boil briefly, drain, throw away the water, and repeat with fresh water. The idea is to get rid of the bitterness ( oranges at that time were more likelly to be Seville oranges rather than the very sweet ones we are familiar with today).

That makes sense that they'd be bitter if using the whole peel. Another way to get around it for a modern cook might be to just use a zester. Changes of water like that are common in a lot of old marmalade recipes, too!